Watch Corey Lee discuss science and cooking with a Harvard professor

This week, before he was declared one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs, Benu’s Corey Lee gave a lecture at UCSF with David Weitz, PhD, a physics professor at Harvard University. Weitz is an expert in the physics of soft matter, and at Harvard, he started a course named “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter.” You may have heard about — it’s the one that features folks like Ferran Adria, Wylie Dufresne, Harold McGee and co.

The topic was “Science & Cooking” featuring a discussion and demonstration of the increasingly parallel technologies behind modern cooking and bioscience.

Lee on the starting point of a dish: technique or ingredient? (1:02:27)

The lecture is a fabulous use of your time, but if you don’t want to watch the entire thing, here are nine smart things they said:

“When I first started cooking, it was 1995, that was only 17 years ago … at that time, something like this [lecture] would be highly unlikely… it’s a good example how we as chefs have so many resources to tap into now.” — Lee.

“Obviously cooking is just taking a liquid and turning it into a solid. well, I’m a physicist, I know what that is! That’s a phase transition!” — Weitz, only somewhat joking.

“What’s interesting about this egg [Lee’s thousand-year-old quail egg] is you’ve made it into a solid, without heating it up and if you look at the texture, it’s translucent. ” — Weitz, before making a 30-second thousand-year-old egg.

“Part of the reason why shark fin is so prized is because it’s expensive and obviously if you’re making faux shark fin, it’s not as expensive, so we had to add that luxury back in. So this is a texture made from a truffle puree.” — Lee, explaining his faux shark fin dish.

“The way we [scientists] try to explain [mouthfeel] is through the elasticity. So how can we understand something about elasticity? Well, the way I always teach my science course about elasticity is to remind of a spring… ” — Weitz.

“More than new technology, it’s existing technology that has been applied to cooking … for the first time you have access, outside of an industrial company, to work with these things in your restaurant.” — Lee, answering the question of his favorite new technology.

“I think more and more what’s happening is that chefs aren’t limiting themselves to being creative with flavor combinations. I think that’s where a lot of the creativity was 10, 20 years ago.” — Lee.

“As we progress and we try to evolve and find things, it’s really important to document the things we do.” — Lee.

“My own view, 15 years from now, a prerequisite for studying physics will be learning how to cook.” — Weitz.